My Professional Mission Statement

[This week is Career Week at my company and a great opportunity to reflect on my career and what lies ahead]

A few years ago, my manager, Stefano, introduced me to the concept of defining personal Mission and Vision statements to help me guide my career.

I updated my About page some time ago with my professional mission statement but never elaborated on it. This post is a good opportunity to do so.

My professional mission statement is:

  I aim to build software based on sustainability, openness, and humane values, driving towards a more equitable world.  

I'm an engineer at heart so building software is what I do and what I enjoy the most.

We are facing a climate change that is impacting all humanity and it is our duty for ourselves and future generations to do as much as we can to circumvent it. In my profession, the best I can do is build sustainable software that have minimal carbon impact on the planet.

There are many approaches to build software, but I only want to do it in a way that fosters openness, transparency and human-centered values. I have been fortunate to work for many years with great colleagues and users that are kind, knowledgeable, willing to listen, giving and receiving constructive feedback.

I can't imagine switching to another working environment as I believe in a variant of Conway's law:

Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which copy the behaviours of these organizations.

By acting with transparency and empathy, we are more likely to build software that creates a more open and humane world.

All I am doing professionally is making sure that I contribute to a better world for my kids, and the world I want for them is an equitable one where every individual has opportunities to grow, learn, and accomplish their goals.

I do not want to build software that benefits a few at the expense of the rest of the humanity. That is what attracted me to Open Source development at the beginning of my career, and I still believe in it more than 20 years later.

Unfortunately, my mission statement is at odds with most of the IT industry which aims for infinite growth at the expense of users, citizens, its own employees and the planet.

I have to live with that dichotomy and do my best to align the world with my values and beliefs. My mission statement is a simple effective way to never lose sight of what is truly meaningful to me.